Head and Heel

You curl and slink
Offering the poison all must one day drink.
Multi-venomed Ourobouros,
All-encircling wall of fear!
We feel your venom, feel your sting!
For every night we close our eyes.
Once, you were only sleep,
Somnus was your name,
Until that malic sin was tasted
In the umbrage of that Tree
And the One who planted it.
Then the veil was rent asunder
From top to bottom
And we saw that slumber was only the tip
Of that rattling, serpent
Whose blood is colder than an epitaph.
Your manifold names revealed,
Your true form unleashed.
Who is immune to your inevitable virus
Of which we are all carriers and victims?
We flee from thee still...
Lord Thanatos, Lady Kali,
You, Viper of the Final Night.
And to those fools for whom you are invisible,
Who see no stings
And grant you no victories:
I beg them to circumspection.
I beg them to gaze long
At the cemetaried sepulchres of the ages
Which make no effort to cloak
The evidence of your trampled vintage.
And as for victory -- it is assured,
As every day is a pyrrhic war
Under the pervasive Damoclean threat
Of your terrible, swift sword.
This cold-blooded truth slithers on...
Constricting, binding, engorging, biting
Leaving us with nothing
But carcass.

Written on July 9th, 2005

Slanted orange-yellow light
That illuminates the once-white
Now burnt sienna stones of an idle garden.
An orange and white passenger jet
Soars overhead to rendezvous with SFO.
Wind that moments ago was strong enough
To deter swimmers from entering a backyard pool,
Now lazily breezes through -- shuffling a frond or two.
Two dogs yap ceremoniously
At a sound they do not understand
As the slanting light disappears
From the rocks and the sand.
Calm now sets the water of the pool
As birds twitter their unknown tongue.
Black dog jumps in with a splash!
Twilight -- the day is done.

Invocation

Goddamn it!
I have been waiting here for hours
how many? Five?
Yes, five hours I have been sitting here
Waiting for you.
I have the prayer mat and shawl
I have lit the seven candles
I brought all the right supplications
I have all the invocations
I satisfied all the superstitions
I have sought all the right transmissions
I have arranged the right numbers
I have slept the seven slumbers
I brought all the sharp devices
I have offered the sacrifices
And you don’t even so much as drop a toe
to meet my mat
Not even a whiff of wind
Not a flicker of the candle
Not a movement or a cadence
Not a ponderous, descending trail of wax
Cascading from its red molten crown
Where wick and flame are redolent
With vapors malic and warm
Awakening me to the silly fact
That...

So that’s where you’ve been hiding
You most elusive Muse.